When was the last time YOU enjoyed your food anywhere near this much?
So if you thought I was kidding about how much Katie wants table food... any kind of table food...
Check out the smile...
You don't realize how much you've lost by being an adult until you see pure joy and enthusiasm like this. We rarely take the time to really enjoy things like young children do.
Try to work a little of that into your day today. Yes, including the mess.
-k
The Alaskan Contingent are in town! Here is our beloved group the first day we got to see them!
Admittedly, the boys don't ALWAYS get along that well...
And that one is just a lovely shot of OUR little Princess...
-k
This being Spring Break, Michael and I thought we'd switch places for a day so that he could have a day with the kids. The weather is lovely, and I was more than happy to do that.
I hadn't been hear at the Mail Center 45 minutes when he called to say, in a very exasperated tone of voice, "This ISN'T a day off!"
Well, it is for me.
It isn't that I don't love my children. God knows I adore the little monsters. And I am honestly grateful for each and every day that I get to spend home with them. I am getting to watch Katie learn everything for the first time. I am watching them grow up. Having Ian home with me instead of in daycare has not only been great financially, but it's really made a HUGE improvement in his behavior. And time is passing so quickly with Cory that he'll be ready to move out the next time I blink.
But it's not easy. By no stretch of the imagination is balancing three kids at such different ages with such different personalities, needs, wants, senses of humor, levels of tolerance and neediness. It's NOT easy. But I love it, and I've had time to adjust to it. Hell, if Katie were sleeping more than 2-3 hours at a stretch, I think it would be fairly easy, actually. But it's also something I'm adjusted to and I know what to expect.
It was very validating to hear that Michael sees how hard it is to stay home with them all day. I don't sit on the couch with my feet up, eating bon bons, and reading. It's work to stay home with them, run errands with them, cook with them, feed them all, get them to the various activities they are part of, and all the other millions of unpaid duties that go with fulltime dedicated parenting.
So, while I am here at the Whoop Whoop today, I am smiling and cheerful. I am making the most of my glimpse into what Michael's day is like. I don't mean to make it sound like what he does it easy. On the one hand, it is. On the other hand, he has to deal with each and every nutty customer that comes in with as much grace, dignity, and poise as he can muster and some time it takes more muster than others.
Have a lovely weekend,
-k
So, although we CLEARLY have no house elf to help with the household chores... what we DO have is a snack faerie, who helps consume all the tastiest treats in the house, but only when no one is looking.
I know what you are thinking. I MARRIED the snack faerie. And while, that's certainly true, lately the snack faerie has targetting things that Michael wouldn't snack on. For instance, Mom keeps a little container of sugar cubes for her tea. Michael wouldn't walk past and steal a sugar cube. A bag of chips, a pint of ice cream, any candy bar not nailed to a surface too heavy to be easily removed, yes... random sugar cubes, no. And it's been happening a LOT. Ian isn't aware of those sugar cubes... and he's more of a pantry stealer. If there's anything tempting stored in the pantry, he helps himself and hides under my desk to eat it.
Thus, by process of elimination, it was either me (I don't like sugar. Guard your chex mix with your life, but your sweets are safe from me), Katie (...), or Cory.
Uh HUH.
And he's knee deep in denial. Swore he not only hadn't ever taken a sugar cube, but went so far as to try to convince me that he didn't know what sugar cubes ARE. If THAT doesn't scream guilty, what would? Honestly... Mom, I've never heard of a sugar cube. What is that? I've never seen one of those. What would you even use one for? Where can you even buy those? It's a cube, made of ... sugar?
What a dork.
Mom took matters into her own hands. She keeps the mystical sugar cubes in her room now.
I would have wired them with a remote control Tazer gun and let the fun begin.
-k
I have been working VERY hard on our yard lately. I LOVE our yard. I love to spend time out in it. I love for the kids to spend time out in it. I love to sit at my kitchen table and look out at the yard. Love to show people the yard. Love to plan the next thing I'm going to do to the yard. Love the yard.
I should say something here... in case you didn't pick up on this, because I'm being subtle about it and you might have to read between the lines... I LOVE MY YARD.
Yesterday, I was giving Michael a tour of the yard and all the awesome things Mom and I've done to it lately... when I noticed an unfriendly hole at the edge of the vegetable garden. It was too round and too clearly a hole to have happened randomly. Someone or something made that hole. Recently.
No bueno.
So, I took a few cups of mud and quickly filled the hole and backed away.
Nothing.
I figured that if I got up in the morning and the mud was undisturbed, then whoever or whatever made the hole was no longer in residence.
Fast forward to this morning. I was bustling around the kitchen making myself a cup of coffee and putting together breakfast for the kids when I remembered... remembered the unfriendly and possibly occupied hole.
I went outside, hoping to see a harmless mound of mud.
You guessed it.
All the mud was cleared away from the hole... kind of in a blast pattern. Like whoever or whatever was down IN the hole didn't appreciate my sense of humor. AT ALL.
Yikes.
So, I bustled right back inside and told Mom. Who came out to investigate. Took one look at the blast pattern and laughed at me. Not supportive at all. Then she went to get the rake to poke into the hole. Which made all the hair on the back of my neck stand straight on end. Which, if you've seen me, is a LOT of hair. ARE YOU CRAZY WOMAN? Poking a rake end into an unfriendly and recently cleared hole?!?
Until she poked the end of the rake into the hole... and it very clearly hit something solid. About two inches down. Which was, as she had suspected, the sprinkler head buried there.
THAT will make you feel like a big tough badass... scared by a sprinkler that didn't even have the good graces to unnerve your mother in the slightest.
I shouldn't have shared that story. EVER. In fact, I believe I will instantly begin the denial process.
-k
P.S. On the upside, I bought myself another tree for my birthday. A LOVELY mexican lime tree. And since he's a limey, I named him Simon. Then, when it was pointed out to me that he's a MEXICAN lime, I added Pedro. My lime tree... Simon Pedro. He already has TONS of tiny little baby limes on him. Whoo hoo! Happy birthday to me... I bought myself a lime tree... his name is Siiiiiiiimon Peeeeeeeedro. Happy birthday to me!
It took him forever to grow out this moptop.
But he had to chop it off for the tennis team...
I haven't been blogging much lately. Several reasons:
First and foremost: Katie still doesn't sleep longer than 2-3 hours at a stretch. I'm about to have a psychotic episode.
Secondly: I am so pre-occupied with the first reason, that it's hard to think about much else.
Thirdly: When she isn't sleeping, (which is most of the time), she demands a lot of attention and things that are "non-essential" are bumped down the list... like doing anything I enjoy, going to the bathroom by myself, and some degree of personal hygeine. I can't remember the last time I brushed my hair.
Fourth: If you think that isn't enough reasons, you clearly don't understand the first reason. Let's try a little experiment. Set some kind of alarm to go off every 2 hours FOR THE NEXT 8 MONTHS... oh, and carry this 22 lb, squirming alarm with you nearly all of that time. And if you could arrange for the alarm to need your nearly constant attention, you would almost be there. NOW MAKE THE ALARM POOP.
-k
